


Shattered

by GillianInOz



Series: Bend But Do Not Break [1]
Category: Endeavour
Genre: Description of past sexual assault, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Rape, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-22 21:42:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13773168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GillianInOz/pseuds/GillianInOz
Summary: Thursday’s discovers exactly why Morse was a nervous wreck when he returned from secondment at County.





	Shattered

Morse was by the water, observing the men in waders probing the bank for traces of the lost girl. Thursday watched with narrow eyes from the darkened doorway as the short, tubby detective from County furtively approached him from behind.

Thursday had sensed something off in Morse’s response to the County coppers from the moment they’d arrived, and today there had been something in Ferguson’s florid face when he’d sneered a greeting at Morse that had raised Fred’s hackles. Morse had immediately assumed his blank expression, one Thursday had seen on his face way too many times since he’d been sent off to sort files at Witney after his shooting.

A rum deal, in Fred’s opinion, and poor recompense for being shot in the line of duty. A kick in the teeth actually, he’d thought and still thought, and he’d spent many a drinking session since happily picturing himself wringing Reginald Bright’s scrawny chicken neck and stifling his affected, lisping drawl good and proper. 

Ferguson tapped Morse smartly on the shoulder, and the younger man turned in surprise and then stepped back, almost falling over his own feet.

Thursday heard the shout of laughter from the shorter man, then watched with a frown as Morse hurried away and Ferguson came back to his position in the yard, where another of the County detectives stood, having a smoke. 

“What was all that about then?” 

Benson, Thursday thought. The other man had been introduced as DS Benson.

“Oh, just giving Morse a hard time,” Ferguson chuckled, lighting his own cigarette with a flick of his wrist, then pocketing the lighter with a flash of silver. 

“You watch it,” Benson warned. “He’s City now, and his governor looks like a hard man.”

“As if I care what a little shit like Morse says,” Ferguson sneered. “Anyway, he’s not as cocksure as he once was, did you see the way he jumped a mile when I came up behind him? He got his comeuppance from Osbourne and Peck while he was on our manor, and no mistake,” he said with a leering grin.

“Those bastards,” Benton said, spitting forcefully into the dirt. “You keep away from them, Fergie. They’re bad news.”

“They get on well enough,” Ferguson said defensively. “They sure put that little queer in his place, good and proper. Shut his big mouth up after they was done with him, quiet as a little lamb he was, until he was gone for good.”

“Yeah, I heard how they put the pretty young lads ‘in their place’,” Benton said disgustedly. “And they have the nerve to call him queer?”

Thursday frowned, sinking further back in the shadow of the doorway.

Ferguson drew deep on his smoke. “It’s only what he deserved,” he defended. “Poncing around, shooting his mouth off, making his betters look bad. I’ll tell you what looked bad,” he snickered. “That little queer trying to sit down without crying for the next week.”

Benton shook his head, his face twisted in a grimace. “I can’t wait until my transfer comes through,” he said, and stomped off around the side of the house.

“Another fecking queer,” Fergus muttered, flicking his cigarette into the bushes and following his fellow detective.

Thursday stood for long moments in the shadow of the doorway, trying to absorb what he’d just heard. Someone called his name from within the house and he started back to awareness, only then realising that his fists had been so tightly clenched that his short nails had left bloody crescents on his palms.

888

He saw the rest of the case through with one eye on Morse, but Benson and Ferguson didn’t show back up at the girl’s school, and the case itself had so many twists and turns he didn’t have time to dwell too much on what he’d heard.

Later, when it was all done, he sat in his armchair in the quiet of his home after his family had all gone to their beds, and thought long, dark thoughts.

Morse, after four months at County, thin and pale, visibly changed, shrunken in on himself. 

_“What were they feeding you up there?”_

_“Mockery and humiliation mostly.”_

Thursday puffed on his pipe and remembered the nervy pallor, Morse starting at loud noises, quiet, withdrawn, distracted. He’d put it down to a sort of delayed shock after the shooting, and maybe hitting the bottle too hard as a means of coping with it. Morse’s own manner had suggested that might be the case. But couldn’t it just as easily have been the manner of someone who’d been attacked unexpectedly by people he should have been able to trust?

Thursday didn’t want to believe it, but he’d been in the service, one way or another, all his adult life. He knew that these things happened. Older men in charge of boys barely out of short pants. Bullying and hazing could turn dark in an instant, and more than one lad had been driven out of the service – or worse – by unspeakable acts.

It made Thursday’s gut ache to think that Morse could have been the victim of something like that, and suddenly he found he couldn’t stand the thought another moment. He had to know.

888

It was nearly midnight when Thursday pulled up in front of Morse’s flat, but there was a dull glow of light from the slit he could see through the downstairs window. As he walked down the stairs from the street he could hear the heartbreaking sound of an opera singer in mid aria. He rapped on the door sharply, and after a moment the music stopped.

“Who is it?” Morse called out.

“Thursday.”

There was a pause and then Morse was opening the door, clad in loose, faded pyjama pants and a worn singlet.

“Sir? 

“Sorry, its late,” Thursday said. “Wondered if I could have a word?”

Morse blinked in surprise, and Thursday could almost see him running a list of their open cases across his mind. “Of course,” he said, stepping back. “Come in.”

Morse cleared off a kitchen chair and gestured for his governor to sit in the armchair. “What about?”

Thursday took his time, pulling his pipe out of his pocket. “D’you mind?” he asked, gesturing with his lighter.

Morse shook his head and Thursday tamped a bit of tobacco in the bowl and lit the pipe, drawing deeply but with little pleasure as the threads caught and glowed white hot.

“I wanted to pick your brains on something,” Thursday said slowly. “About a County matter.”

He narrowed his eyes through the haze of smoke as Morse stiffened and then seemed to deliberately relax his shoulders. “Oh, yes?” 

“You ever run across a DI Osbourne and a DI Peck?”

Morse paled, his jaw clenching. “Why?” he said, his voice even.

“There’s been some allegations made,” Thursday said, hating the subterfuge but already aware it was bearing fruit. Morse’s skin was waxy pale now, sweat starting to bead on his forehead. “Serious allegations. From a young constable.”

Morse stared at him across the dimly lit room, his eyes seeming to swallow up his face. There were no questions now, not even a pretence of curiosity. Just a kind of frozen stare, like a deer in headlights. 

“Maybe you heard something similar while you were seconded there? A young man, cornered in the changing rooms after hours by two older officers. Rape,” Thursday said bluntly, and suddenly Morse was on his feet and bolting for the toilet. He slammed the thin wooden door open and dropped to his knees just in time to heave and retch up the contents of his stomach.

Thursday closed his eyes, grief assailing him. He’d known, of course he’d known. Ever since that slimy little slug Ferguson had opened his mouth to his colleague, he’d known what he was talking about. Fred was a copper, he could put two and two together, and he’d spent a lot of time watching and worrying over Morse when he’d gotten back to Oxford.

_“What was it you said? The light’s gone out of him.”_

Slowly, feeling a hundred years old, Thursday stood up and crossed to the shelf, pulling down a bottle of scotch and two glasses. He poured out a measure and carried it to the door of the tiny toilet, leaning against the door jamb and watching as Morse finished puking and spat into the bowl.

He was still too thin, Thursday thought. His shoulder blades were like wings on his back, his pyjama pants loose around his waist. Morse was kneeling, still shuddering, leaning against the chipped bowl of the ancient porcelain loo.

“Here,” Thursday said gruffly. “Rinse your mouth out.”

Morse sat for a few moments more, clinging to the bowl, then slowly heaved himself to his feet and reached one hand behind him for the glass.

“Scotch?” he said thickly.

“I’d call it a waste of liquor, but this cheap swill is only good for killing tooth worms anyway. Go on,” he urged gently. “Get that taste out of your mouth.”

Morse sipped and spat, then sipped and spat again, finally taking the last swig from the glass and swallowing it down. He pulled the loo chain and turned, stumbling a little. He fumbled to brace himself on the wall of the narrow bog, then reared back as Thursday automatically reached out a steadying hand to him.

“You’re all right,” Thursday said, stepping back and holding his hands up. “You’re all right, Morse.”

Morse leaned unsteadily against the wall. “Must have had some bad ale,” he said hoarsely.

“If you say so,” Thursday said gently. He crossed to the bed and pulled a thin coverlet from the end. “Here,” he said, offering it to Morse. He wanted to wrap it around thin shoulders, but he daren’t approach him again, that automatic flinch back told its own story about the space Morse needed.

So Thursday just held out the blanket and Morse took it without complaint, although he didn’t wrap it around himself, just sat back on the chair and laid it across his lap, long, thin fingers stroking the worn old pattern. 

“I’m sorry,” Thursday said. “I’m sorry for coming out with it that way. I had to know, for sure.”

Morse frowned at him in dawning comprehension. “There is no young constable, is there?”

“Other than you, you mean?”

Morse stared back at him, his jaw tight.

“I’m sure there is,” Thursday said wearily. “I doubt you were the first, but by God unless I’m too late, you’ll be the last.”

“How did you…?” His frown deepened as his agile mind penetrated his shock and caught up. “Ferguson,” he said. “Who else knows?” 

“In Oxford? No one.”

Morse looked away, his lean cheeks casting shadows in the dim light. “As far as you know. Could be everyone at the nick knows, or soon will. Ferguson has a small mind and a big mouth.”

“If it was going to reach Cowley it would have by now,” Thursday said. “Can you… Can you talk about it?”

“Could you?” Morse said, darting him a glance. “Could anyone?” He rubbed at his face, wearily, pressing his fingers to his eyes. 

“When you came back I knew something was wrong, I should have seen it was more than just shock after the shooting.”

“Nothing you could have done. There was nothing I could do.” He looked down blindly at his hands. “That was the worst part, there was nothing I could do. I’ve been bullied before, taken my share of knocks from men who thought I needed to be put in my place.” He shook his head in disbelief. “But I wasn’t expecting… How could I have expected that?”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

Morse was shaking his head before Thursday had finished speaking. “No,” he said. “I can’t. Please don’t ask me.”

Thursday turned the glass around in his hands, looking at the light reflecting through the pale amber liquid. “I can understand that, Morse. I know there’s just some things can’t be said out loud. I saw things in the war.” His voice thickened. “Things I’ve never been able to speak of with a living soul. Even other men who were there.”

They finished their drinks and Thursday poured them another, the neck of the bottle clinking against the lip of the glass. His hands were shaking, Fred realised. He felt cold despite the warmth of the night. 

“I did try to report it,” Morse said into the silence. 

“Who to?” 

Morse rubbed his forehead wearily. “The MO at Witney, a Dr White. I couldn’t talk about it, but I wrote everything down and I went to him to take pictures of my injuries and to examine me and report the rest.”

Thursday stared at him, amazed. “By god, that took guts.”

“I didn’t want to,” Morse said shakily. “But I couldn’t bear the thought of someone else going through what I had.”

And I used just that as the bait on the end of my line to hook this confession out of him, Thursday thought, flushed with shame. No wonder he’d puked his guts up. And how typical of Morse, to throw himself into the fire to try to save another innocent from being a victim.

The thought that he’d failed in that must have been just one more torture added to the ordeal.

“He listened, quite kindly actually,” Morse said, his mouth twisting. “Then he advised me, for my own good, to put the whole matter out of my mind. Told me the smartest thing I could do was just keep my head down until my time ran out, oh, and avoid being alone with them again. As if I couldn’t figure that out myself.”

“He wouldn’t help you,” Thursday said. 

“No one helped me,” Morse said bleakly.

“Did he at least examine you?” 

“I didn’t ask him again, not after that.”

“But you saw a doctor?” Thursday said anxiously. “Christ, Morse,” he said when the younger man just shook his head. “You could have been bleeding internally, you could have got sepsis, or VD.”

“I didn’t. I healed. It was just like the bullet wound. You get through the pain, and you heal.”

“It’s not like a bullet wound,” Thursday said. “A man can wear the scar of a bullet wound like a badge of honour. But when rape is used against a man it’s an attempt to take away his honour. To emasculate him. To shame him.” He cleared his throat. “I hope you know, Morse, that you have nothing to be ashamed of. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Morse shook his head, and a single tear that had been clinging to his eyelash splashed down his cheek. “I should have seen something was wrong,” he said bleakly. “I should have figured it out earlier.”

“No,” Thursday said as firmly as his shaking voice would allow. “You’re not to blame, Morse. None of this is your fault.” He pulled his huge, snowy white hanky from his pocket, and leaned forward, holding it out. 

Morse studied it for long moments, then reached out and took it, wiping at wet eyes and blowing his nose into its folds. He sat for a long while, hunched over, his head bowed. Thursday leaned back in his chair, looking at the tangle of russet hair and mourning the bright young man he’d first met the year before. 

“Everyone knew them, Osborne and Peck,” Morse said quietly, at last. “There was an older sergeant there who warned me about them. Said to keep my distance.” He shrugged bony shoulders, still not looking up. “I thought he meant they were crooked.”

Fred puffed at his pipe as another silence lengthened. The bedsit was so small, so dim with just the two little lamps lit. It seemed as if the walls were drawing in around them, and it was just he and Morse, alone in a dark, quiet world.

“It was a warehouse,” Morse said. “Not at the station. I’d been called out to see a man about some items going missing, but... There was no man. Just an empty warehouse. And then them.”

A drop of moisture fell onto the back of Morse’s hand where it held the scrunched up hanky, and then another. 

“They’re big men, twice my size. I suppose I didn’t stand a chance, but I did fight them,” Morse finally looked up at him, and Thursday almost flinched from the burning fire in his eyes. “I did fight them, sir.”

“Of course you did,” Thursday said hoarsely. “Two against one, that’s how cowards operate.”

“They laughed the whole time,” Morse said, and now his eyes grew dark and distant, looking back in time. Thursday wished with all his heart that he could just tell Morse to stop looking back, to forget it, to please not make this horrible picture any clearer.

But if Morse of all people was speaking it was because he needed to. Because he’d been carrying this poison around inside him for months, and if it wasn’t drawn out it would taint every part of his future.

So Fred listened. 

“When… when it was over, I thought they were going to kill me,” Morse said, so softly Fred had to strain to hear him. “They pulled my head back by my hair, and I thought they were going to cut my throat.” He shrugged wearily. “I didn’t much care by then, I just wanted the pain to be over.”

Thursday blinked, wiping the corner of his eye with a shaking finger. Please let this be over soon, he thought. For both our sakes.

“They had a truncheon,” Morse said, and the remembered horror was in his eyes. “And they made me look at it. They said if I told, if I squealed.” He shut his eyes and bowed his head again. “That they’d use that on me next time.”

“Bastards,” Thursday said thickly, sick to his very soul. “Fucking bastards.”

Morse shook his head. “I don’t know how to feel safe any more,” he admitted. “I don’t know how to trust. Except for you,” he said, looking at Thursday with a half shrug. “You’re the only person I still trust.”

“You can trust me,” Thursday said hoarsely. “I’m glad you know that. But you should have been safe there, of all places. In your own nick, with your own sort. I’m sick thinking of how many lives those bastards have ruined with their evil games. I’m sick with it.”

Fred reached for the bottle and poured them both another measure of the cheap whiskey. 

“I’m sorry,” Morse said, staring into the amber liquid. “I wasn’t going to talk about it. I didn’t mean to.”

“Reckon you needed to,” Thursday said. “And maybe I needed to hear it before I do what I need to do.” 

Morse frowned at him. “What do you mean? What do you need to do?”

“What do you think? Osbourne and Peck. Do you think I’m going to let those evil shits get away with this? What the hell am I a copper for, if I stand around with my eyes closed while two senior officers ill use one of my men? Any young man?”

“There’s nothing you can do,” Morse said desperately. “It was months ago, and it’s my word against theirs. Besides, my brief spurt of courage notwithstanding, I won’t report it again. I won’t put myself through that.”

“I don’t blame you. You need to look to yourself now, to getting through this. You let me worry about making sure those mongrels don’t hurt any one else. You’re young and you’re strong. You’ll get over this.”

“You don’t get over this,” Morse said bleakly. “You just learn to live with it.”

Thursday sighed. “Sometimes that’s the same thing.” 

They sat in silence for long minutes as Morse finished his drink and Thursday puffed on his pipe.

“I don’t want you to get into trouble,” Morse said at last.

Thursday showed his teeth in a snarling smile. “You let me worry about that.”

888

“I’m sorry I had to bring it all up for you again, Morse,” Thursday said as he put his hat back on his head and tilted it until it sat just right.

“It’s all right,” Morse said, looking down at the crumpled handkerchief in his fist. “I feel… it’s all right.”

He held out the hanky but Thursday smiled gently and shook his head. “You keep it. You use it when you have to. A good cry now and then is better than drinking yourself insensible.” He nodded to the record player, “Reckon you can find a few of those operas that are perfect to cry to.”

Morse shrugged and managed an almost-smile. “Most of them, I should think.”

“I’ll see you in the morning then.”

“Yes, sir. Sir?” he said and Thursday paused in the doorway. “Um. Thank you. For the handkerchief.”

Thursday smiled and tipped his hat. Inside he was still a twisted knot of grief and rage, but there was an easing to the tension in Morse’s lean cheeks, and his eyes, even wet with unshed tears, looked a little more serene.

Well good, Thursday thought. If he could ease some of this burden, if letting it out had drawn some of the poison from Morse’s soul, then that was a result. If he could he would take it all away from him, erase the shadows and the memories of pain. 

He couldn’t do that, of course. But by god he could do something.

888

“Oy, did you hear about the mess at Witney?” Strange said to Jakes, who looked up from the notebook he was scribbling in.

Morse looked up from his typewriter. “What mess?” he asked.

Strange didn’t seem to mind another willing ear, he sidled closer until Morse and Jakes were leaning in, and looked furtively around the room. “There was a tip off about some stolen goods,” he said lowly. “Being stored in a lock-up in town.”

“So?” Jakes said.

“The lock-up belongs to two DI’s” Strange said. “Stolen goods and evidence nicked from the evidence locker and too hot to fence.”

“Who was this?” Morse asked suspiciously.

“Never mind that, you haven’t heard the worst part,” Strange said. “Alongside the stolen goods they found photos, didn’t they? Filthy pornographic stuff.” He looked around and lowered his voice. “Kiddies,” he said with a grimace.

Jakes grimaced. “Kiddie porn?” he said disgustedly. “Coppers? With that filth?”

“Two of them,” Strange confirmed. “Course it’s all coming out now. The whole nick there saying the two had a bad reputation and everyone hated them.”

“They better get used to not having any friends,” Jakes said scornfully, his face still screwed up with distaste. “Can you imagine what the old lags in stir will think about a pair of nonces who happen to be coppers?”

“I’d say they have the life expectancy of a chocolate kettle,” Strange smirked. 

“Do you know their names?” Morse said flatly.

“Osbourne and Peck,” Thursday said from the doorway, and the three young men jumped. “And if you haven’t got anything better to do than gossip like washerwomen, I’m sure I can find you some busy work.”

“Yes, sir, sorry, sir,” Jakes said smartly.

Morse just stared at him across the room. 

“Mr Bright will be making a statement to everyone on the matter shortly,” Thursday said genially. “So let’s shelve the comments until then, all right?”

“Yes, sir,” Strange said, hurrying off.

“All right, Morse?” Thursday said.

Morse was all eyes as he stared at his governor. “Yes, sir.”

888

“How did you do it?”

Thursday laid a finger aside his nose. “Ways and means, Morse. Ways and means. They’re not the only ones who can dig around in evidence lockers.”

“I told you I don’t want you getting into trouble.”

Thursday smiled. “There’s no trail back to me, or you, or Cowley nick. There’s just two evil bastards getting the least of what they deserve. Besides, most of what was in the lock up is their doing. I only… gilded the lily a bit is all. I told you, Morse. They’re never going to hurt anyone ever again.”

888

Billy Ferguson hurried across the darkened road towards the White Lion. Not his favourite pub, but right now he was avoiding the haunts of his fellow coppers. Osbourne and Peck were sitting in the cells in the City jail, and every rock the investigating officers turned over revealed more and more filthy pies they’d had their fingers in.

His fellow coppers had inconveniently good memories, Fergie thought sourly. And his previous palling around with Osbourne and Peck was making him persona non grata with cops who wanted to make it quite clear to Division that they hadn’t ever tasted a piece of those crooked pies.

While most of them had, Ferguson knew. Cowardly bastards.

“Hello, Fergie,” a genial voice greeted him from the mouth of an alley, and Fergie almost jumped out of his skin.

“Who’s there?” he said nervously, shielding his eyes as a car swept around the corner, its headlights illuminating the scene for a moment. A dark, hulking shape in the mouth of the alley, trilby pulled down low.

“Just a fellow copper, Fergie,” said the cheerful voice. “Thought I’d pass on a message, real friendly like.”

Fergie took a step back towards the gutter, casting a desperate glance at the lit windows of the Lion. For all his genial tone, the man’s demeanour was as friendly as a dagger slid from its sheath.

“About?”

“Your mouth, Fergie. And how well you can keep it shut.”

Fergie desperately searched his memory for who he could have pissed off, what little scams he’d pulled that could have warranted a ‘friendly’ warning like this.

“I don’t got nothing to say,” he stammered, reverting to his Tyneside accent in his pants wetting fear. “About nothing.”

“Good, good,” the genial voice said. “Because if I hear a dicky bird from you about young coppers being ‘put in their place’,” the voice continued, and all pretence of geniality slid away. “I will track you down and personally remove that filthy tongue of yours. Do you hear me, Fergie?”

Icy terror slid down Fergie’s spine. That wasn’t a threat. That was a promise.

“I… I hear you.”

“Good chap,” the voice crooned. “Might be time for a transfer, don’t you think? Back up north maybe? See the old docks again?”

Fergie swallowed hard, eyes flicking to the road again as another car swished by. When he looked back at the alley the gleaming light of the street lamps hitting the wet walls now framed the darkness of the alley’s entry. Fergie looked around frantically, but the road was empty, he was alone in the darkness and the softly pattering rain.

Maybe it was time for a change.

888

A grimy envelope passed from one hand to another, as the echoing clang of metal doors closing rang down the brightly lit corridors. It was slipped in one pocket, then into another pocket, finally it was pushed through the peephole in one scarred cell door.

When it hit the hard floor on the other side of the door there was a dull clunk.

A few hours later two men were sitting on a bench in the secure section of the yard. They were big men, with hard, florid faces. Men with big, hoary hands and small, mean mouths. But their size didn’t make much difference when the long thin blade was slid between the first man’s ribs, and then wrenched out to slice cleanly across the other man’s throat.

“For Endeavour,” the man with the home made knife said, before turning and strolling back through the open gate into the general yard, carefully closing and locking the door behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> Warning, this story is about Morse recovering from being raped, and includes fairly graphic – but not gratuitous - descriptions of that rape.


End file.
